


I am sent running to search under the trees

by crimsonandclover



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/F, Song fics, alternative universes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28933047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonandclover/pseuds/crimsonandclover
Summary: a collection of very short dani/jamie fics inspired by songs
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33





	1. be tormented by me, babe

**Author's Note:**

> trying to force myself out of writers block by creating little short things with no real meaning to whatever comes on shuffle. pt.1 Emotion - Carly Rae Jepsen
> 
> playlist with all songs used is here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Foay7qPHmTXREteBd4u0F

Jamie wakes with anticipation in her chest. Fading visions of soft blonde locks and an earnest smile in her head. She hangs on to the feeling of it as long as she can, sure it reminds her of something. But, as dreams are want to do, by the time she’s swallowed the last of her tea at breakfast she couldn’t tell you anything about her.

Until

4.45pm, or thereabouts. A standard Wednesday. Steady stream of customers, matching flowers to requests, stocktake, stem trimming, dirt under her nails. 

A standard Wednesday until blonde locks and an earnest smile walk in.

Jamie gapes at her for definitely more than can be considered appropriate. Lucky her display of lilies has caught attention well enough she isn’t noticed losing her mind. Which is currently flashing through every repeated moment she’s already met this woman, hazy and inconsistent in a dream land but her all the same.

“Can I help?”

“Oh, hi. Yes,” the voice of an angel responds. “I need. Flowers.”

Jamie laughs. “Well, you’ve come to the right place.”

They make a bouquet together. Something simple and sweet for a relative or a co-worker or someone Jamie’s not sure of. Wrapped and in her arms in no time. And then Jamie is asking her to go for a drink, nothing fancy, and they’re sitting in a booth at her local, laughter falling from pretty pinks lips, conversation flowing like time has no meaning.

Jamie kisses her on her front doorstep. Pulls back to sparkling eyes and a content smile. Feels her heart thud in her chest.

Then

Jamie wakes with anticipation in her chest. Fading visions of soft blonde locks, an earnest smile and sparkling eyes in her head.


	2. Crawlin' back to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pt.2 Do I Wanna Know - The Artic Monkeys
> 
> very much an AU

Dani sips another mouthful of wine, eyes not leaving the messaging thread open on her phone. Indecision swirls like a bitter mouthful.

A hasty message. Sent before regret can grab her.

Another drink. Downed before she gets a response.

(512) 546 4564:  
_Not a good idea._

(512) 693 5634:  
_Just tonight.  
Please._

A knock. A familiar face. A familiar scowl. 

A duck to the side when Dani tries to kiss her.

“Just. Tonight.”

Dani nods. “Ok.”

A kiss returned. Hands mapping familiar territory. A stumbled pathway, clothes discarded.

Dani thinks, too much. Thinks if she pours enough into this it’ll convince her. If the careful work of her mouth and tongue and fingers are enough, Jamie will stay.

But that isn’t how it works anymore. Broken promises still in disrepair.

And yet Dani will always be hers, lingering at the end of it all.

“Stay.”

But she never does.


	3. you gave me something, you made me realise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pt.3 Thank You (ft. RAYE) - PVRIS

Tamara had been trying to get her to write this for weeks. Picking up on the gently simmering anger Jamie couldn’t help but feel when she’d accidentally dropped her name. Talking around the why and the how and the who leading to her current incarceration. 

Talking about her felt like a scab being picked at, oozy and refusing to heal without being properly excised. Jamie wouldn’t, of course, in any detail. Still loyal to whatever twisted version of kinship had let her take the fall in the first place. But still, Tamara had been trying to get her to write this for weeks.

“Jamie you don’t have to show me. Ever. Or her. Write it. Tear it up. See how it makes you feel.”

Jamie tried. Writing and scribbling out several versions of expletive laid “hey haven’t seen you in a while and I’m still not over what you did.” Jamie tried, but nothing she could put on paper moved these feelings about her out of her bones.

She wasn’t one for this, letting anything uncomfortable sit with her for any length of time, preferring to distract, discourage, distance herself from the difficult. In prison they don’t let you drink the gross built up of guilt away, don’t let you run laps of the yard at 3am when it’s been gnawing at you since the sun went down. In prison they put you on a schedule and fit you into a work slot and let a lifetime of hard choices redefine you. 

In prison they put you to work in a garden and you somehow find solace in a patch of earth and a packet of seeds.

Tamara had been trying to get her to write this for weeks, months even, but it wasn’t ‘til Jamie found herself elbow deep in dirt and green and dying and regrowth that the words would come to her. The thank you. Thank you for creating the ending I needed for this beginning. Thank you for giving me something to lose that has meaning. Thank you for exploiting the worsts parts of me I now know how to safeguard.

The words never did make it to paper. By the time they would they didn’t need to be said anymore. Black ink better purposed to doodles of garden plots, quietly simmering anger dissolved to resurrection. Redirection down a new path.


	4. you can even hear the music at night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh no it got so soft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pt.4 China Grove - The Doobie Brothers.  
> I don't know how this one fits with the song but just go with it yeah?

Sunlight filtering through the leaves dapples Jamie’s face. Eyes closed, head leaned back on Dani’s stomach, she groans when Dani’s fingertips stop tracing delicate shapes over her cheeks and forehead.

“Sorry,” she whispers, resuming the patterns.

“I could stay here forever,” Jamie mumbles, one of her hands coming up to tangle in Dani’s free one, bringing it to her lips to press a kiss to her palm.

The summer heat, fading as the sun goes down, still lingers on their skin. Jamie’s cheek is warm as she turns to press it to Dani’s stomach, gazing up at her wife’s face.

“Dani?”

“Hmm?”

“You ever think about fate?”

Dani cracks one of her eyes open, quizzical.

“That we even met. Two people from opposite sides of the globe, from completely different worlds.”

“You mean like… me running away from a life that wasn’t mine to an isolated manor in England where you just so happened to work and also happened to be the love of my life wasn’t just a coincidence?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Dani starts. “I think sometimes life just works out like that. But we make the effort to keep choosing the people we want in our lives. Why do you ask?”

Jamie pauses.

“Baby?”

“You’ll laugh.”

“Never,” Dani grins.

Jamie exhales. “I’ll never forget the day we first met. How familiar you felt. Like I’d known you my whole life already.”

“You think I’d think that’s silly?”

“I know *I* think that’s silly. I still think about it sometimes though. That feeling of ‘oh it’s you. I’ve been waiting for you for so long and I’m so glad you’re here.’”

Dani’s face softens and she sits up, pulling Jamie to match her, placing soft kisses on her cheeks and her eyelids and her lips before telling her “Well if it’s true, and we’re just two souls destined to always meet, I’m so glad it’s you. I’m so glad I get to find you and choose you in every life.” Dani grins, “just try not to live so far away next time huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> those last two lines are sort of reimagined versions of  
> -a quote i cannot really recall but the closest thing is from a medium artricle about soulmates vs twinflames "I have been waiting for you so long and here you are again. I'm so happy to see you again, after a long, long time"-Suzan Dalia and  
> -"And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you"-Kiersten White, A Chaos of Stars  
> they just work so well for these two


	5. baby not a day goes by

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm not sure what happened here but hopefully it's cute

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pt.5 Still Into You - Paramore  
> I don't really know how this song ties into what I ended up writing either but I'm just vibing at 1.30am and this is what came out

Dani didn’t _love_ driving. Had all the adequate training and experience and could _do_ it, but she didn’t _love_ it. Preferred to let Jamie take the wheel, in charge of more low stakes things like music selection instead. After so many years together Jamie knew this, as well as Dani knew that on longer trips Jamie’s hip started to play up after an hour and if Dani didn’t take over, she’d be up all night in pain.

This is how she found herself behind the wheel on a spontaneous trip to Lake Placid one weekend. Mildly reassured by the relative emptiness of the road but still not totally comfortable in the drivers’ seat, she couldn’t help but grip the steering wheel tight enough to turn her knuckles white without realising it. Jamie, in her never-ending effort to make Dani’s life as easy as possible, and as a thank you for doing something she didn’t entirely enjoy on Jamie’s behalf, had offered her snacks, drinks, a brief rundown of just how she was going to help her relieve the tension when they got to the hotel which Dani shut down much faster than Jamie would have liked and a game of eye spy before finally settling on just tending to the radio and murmuring “you’re doing great, love” occasionally.

There was nothing really, that could truly settle Dani’s nerves in this moment, at least she doesn’t think so until she catches Jamie singing quietly along to the radio. She tries to contain her giggles, really does, but there’s something so magical about her girlfriend singing “my anaconda don't want none, unless you've got buns, hon,” quietly, in an English accent that she can’t help it.

“Oh, so this is what does it? Sir Mix-A-Lot?”

“Apparently,” Dani laughs.

“Alright then,” Jamie clears her throat, launching into the rest of the verse with gusto.

“Jamie when did you learn this?” Dani finally asks

“It just comes from the soul baby. What can I say? I like big butts.”

Dani, tension released in bubbles of laughter, grip on the steering wheel finally loosened in the wake of merriment, reaches over to briefly squeeze Jamie’s hand. “I love you,” she states.

Jamie just grins back at her, humming the intro of the next song that plays. And if her slightly off key singing to Mariah Carey’s Fantasy makes Dani happy, well, she’d gladly croon “baby, I’m so into you, darling if you only knew,” for the rest of her days.


	6. if you could see my heart is bleeding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pt. 6. Dreams In My Head – Anika Moa.
> 
> Ok I am utterly obsessed with novel_concept26’s recent AU “(you may be) my final match” and this song gave me sort of… Jamie and Dani in that universe miscommunicating and ending things like is kind of indicated at the end of chapter 4 and Jamie trying to move on via a return to her previous behaviour. So this is like a fanfic of a fanfic but with my own characterisation and witing aka they probably don't quite match up and obviously this has no bearing on any of the events of the actual story. Anyway I hope that is enough disclaimers please enjoy this lil bit of angst and pls listen to this beautiful Anika Moa song while you read

Jamie presses the message requests icon of her Instagram, scrolls for a second or two and taps on the first message that catches her eye. Sasha. Cute, local, her message flirty but not too intense. They both know how this goes, and it doesn’t take much to line up a drink at a pub near Sasha’s place.

And if Jamie doesn’t feel the way about this that she normally does, she firmly tucks that feeling away under her ribs, uses the ache of it as a distraction. Waits for the day it won’t break her.

It’s 12.30am when Jamie makes it home, a bite mark in the shape of an unfamiliar mouth bruising on her neck, an uncomfortable feeling ballooning in her abdomen. It’s not like the situation had been totally unfamiliar, not like her hands and her mouth and her charm had forgotten it’s way around another’s body. Her heart and her eyes and every part of her brain that wasn’t running on pure instinct on the other hand, she’d never felt so out of sync, miscommunication between her nibbling on that particular spot of a jawline and the lack of breathy gasp she’d come to know so well tilting her off her axis.

She can’t get Dani out of her head.

She wants nothing more than to call her right now, tell her what had happened, detail the events of the evening and get the opinion of the person she trusts most. “Do you think, Dani, that me sleeping with this woman is in any way related to feeling like I’ll never be whole again without you?” Yes, the perfect conversation starter.

Jamie’s body aches, wants nothing more than to sink into bed and forget everything. Jamie’s mind spins, wants nothing more than to see Dani happy and whole and knows this can’t be with her. And yet still conjures visions of Dani: in her bed, in her kitchen, saying I love you and I see all the complicated, messy, hard parts of you and I don’t care. And yet, still thinks Dani shouldn’t have to.

Jamie’s phone is vibrating, so much it almost falls to the floor before she realises, stuck in her cycle of misery. Dani’s name flashes on the screen for half a second before it goes dark, too late to answer.

She doesn’t think she could bite her tongue hard enough to keep an inkling of how she’s feeling out of her voice right now anyway. If only she could. So she stays, and she waits.


	7. her heart can't take it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pt.7 The Village-Wrabel
> 
> Done at the request of @defendingdoughnut! Hope you like it!!

Jamie’s hands in hers, Jamie’s smile almost wider than her face, Jamie’s quiet eyes glued to her face. They shuffle slowly in a circle in time to the music, orchestral and sweet, their guests watching from the edge of the small dancefloor. A bubble of contentment surrounds them, hushed and still. Jamie presses a kiss to Dani’s lips.

“Mrs Clayton,” she whispers in greeting.

“Mrs Clayton,” Dani greets her back.

\---

An hour after the ceremony ends, after the small handful of their closest friends have toasted them multiple times, the marriage certificate, ink still fresh, is tucked away, their wedding attire carefully hung in the wardrobe, they lay in bed together, Dani’s tired head pillowed on Jamie’s chest. Exhaustion is unable to overcome the still thrumming excitement in their veins. They talk quietly, almost in circles, trying to make this moment, this day, feel real.

“I never thought I would have this,” Dani says softly into the dark.

“Have what?”

“You, this, us. Happiness.”

“Hmm,” Jamie sleepily encourages her to go on.

“You know what it was like for me growing up. Before I got out of that town and met you. I think part of me is still stuck there. Being told there’s something about me that isn’t right, doesn’t fit. To keep anything that didn’t conform to myself. Being told I have to dress and talk and act a certain way.”

Jamie’s hands move to her hair, rubbing soothing circles against her scalp. “You know you don’t have to be anything for me, for anyone, now, right?”

“I know,” Dani turns. “And I’m so glad,” she moves up to press a kiss to Jamie’s lips. “I just think a little part of me will always be that scared, confused teenager.”

“That teenager didn’t deserve to feel like that,” Jamie says softly, gazing into her eyes. “That’s on them Dani. Nothing wrong with you, never was.”

Dani nods, a smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah.” She turns around to reposition herself against Jamie’s chest again. “Imagine if 15-year-old me could see me now. Do you think she’d be happy?”

“Absolutely so,” Jamie says, impressively coherant, because about 10s later her hands in Dani’s hair go fully slack and she’s fast asleep.

“I think so too,” Dani whispers, closing her eyes. She falls asleep with the memory of the intolerant village she'd left behind softened by her wife’s steady breathing beside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments make me overwhelmingly happy so please feel free to leave any thoughts!!


	8. take me to your love shack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pt.8. Everybody Talks - Neon Trees
> 
> A lil alcohol cw before u dive in!

Jamie doesn’t think she’s ever been this hungover. Her head pounds sickeningly in time with her heartbeat. The tiny bit of sun shining through the crack in her curtains burns her eyes when she finally opens them. Her whole body feels like it’s on fire? No, been dunked in ice? Every muscle been pulled all at once? Overwhelmingly, status = bad.

She slowly, excruciatingly slowly, rolls onto her side towards the edge of the bed, hoping it will relieve some of the nausea. She groans when she realises this assumption was, unfortunately, incorrect.

“Too loud,” a muffled voice complains from behind her.

Jamie waves her hand behind her in an attempt at an apology. “Dani,” she croaks. “Why?”

“You said, and I quote ‘if the school is paying for this I am going to make up for all the weeknights I have lost to you grading papers’.”

“Seems reasonable.”

“Still think so?”

“Yes?”

Dani laughs, softly, then lets out a hungover groan of her own. “You’re killing me Taylor.”

Jamie reaches for her phone, already regretting how much the light is going to hurt her eyes but wanting to know the time.

It’s 8.47am. It’s 8.47am and she has 3 messages and a missed call from Owen.

“Shit,” she says, jolting upright and immediately regretting it.

“What?”

“Owen?”

“Use your words baby.”

“I have messages…” she trails off, reading the first. “Dani,” she starts. “Remember how we were keeping this on the downlow?”

“Oh Jamie,” Dani says in the voice of someone remembering something they had, until this very moment, forgotten entirely.

“I don’t remember-“  
“I thought-“  
“Oh shit.”

“Well,” Dani says, then bursts out laughing.

“They had a bet.”

“What?”

“A bet. On how soon it would take the ‘clueless’ 9th grade teacher and the groundskeeper to finally get together,” Jamie reads off her phone.

“They didn’t!”

“Owen won $200.”

“Do we tell him we’ve been dating for months?”

“Nah seems funnier to imagine them thinking all it took was the twinkling lights of the school gymnasium and a faculty drinks event to make us finally see what we were missing out on,” Jamie laughs, turning back over to face Dani.

“Well, you did look particularly dashing last night.”

“I remember you telling me that before you stuck your tongue down my throat in the middle of that dancefloor.”

“Hey you started it.”

“Me?” Jamie says, innocence plastered across her face.

“You were trying to feel me up under the table before we even got out there.”

“Touché… you want a reminder of how that went?”

“Not so hungover anymore huh?” Dani grins.

Jamie drapes herself over top of Dani, covering her jawline in kisses and letting her hands wander. “Enough with the chit chat,” she murmurs, sticking her tongue out at her before kissing her properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a request for something else (coming soon!) but naturally I heard this song and was like "must write something entirely goofy at 12.30am" instead and then listened to Everybody Talks on loop for like 45 mins. Lovely. Drink responsibly kids.

**Author's Note:**

> come drop a random song suggestion in my ask box on tumblr (@briightcopperkettles) and I'll try to turn it into something?? collection title from Aunt Elsie’s Night Music - Mary Oliver


End file.
